POETRY
      Philip Hammial — 'Montmartre' and 'Hit Parade'

Montmartre

Skaters adjusted for a classic combo is not
my idea of fun. More to my liking would be
a simple life to trade as art, a soup so subtly spiced
that both Jubal the harpist & Jabal the cattle herder

would relish it, asking for more as it ripples
like a just-evacuated bath, some plump artist’s model
waiting for you to hand her a towel. How long
can she hold that pose? Until the shoot-out

in the Pere Lachaise is over, those Communards left
for the crows, what they deserved? Just another dab
& it’s finished. Time for a cuddle before the pumpkin

coach arrives? Why not? And in any case her pretty foot
is just a tad too big for the slipper; her toes in my mouth,
now that’s my idea of fun.

Hit Parade

Fairy lights on the cover of my latest, what
could I have been thinking of?– that
forty-seven poems about a wrestling match
in foul weather would bring about

a fundamental change
in my star status – from number forty-seven
in the East Anglican hit parade to number one
in one lifetime; how absurd, this poem

a perfect example of my perennial inability
to articulate some universal truth, a sad fact
that’s guaranteed to keep me in the ranks

of the also ran until the day I die or decide
to find some sensible occupation that might take me
to the top; wrestling, with one throw, why not?